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The Virtual Tenants Meeting
Residents in New Downtown Buildings Come Together Over Blogs, Myspace and Message Boards
by Kathleen Nye Flynn
When Christian Wabschall had heard enough of a construction team's teeth-rattling banging outside his apartment in the Pacific Electric Lofts, he didn't bang on the floor or yell at the workers. Instead, he took a typically 21st century tack: He went online and started typing.
"Okay, I'm all for the P.E. face-lift," he wrote on the building's online message site. "But, my fillings are rattling out of my head with all that blasted jackhammering."
Within minutes, he found support. "Ouch... sounds bad," wrote a neighbor, who suggested Wabschall contact building management.
"Yeah, I had (the) biggest headache all day," another commiserated.
Two days later, the building manager went online to respond.
"I know it's a headache," she wrote. "But the building is going to look amazing!" The construction was for a bar downstairs, she added, something many residents were looking forward to having.
The Pacific Electric building's message board is just one of an increasing number of building-specific online chat sites in Downtown Los Angeles. The Toy Factory Lofts and the Higgins Building have tenant listserves, and residents in other structures chart community issues in blogs or create Myspace accounts.
The online sites are the cyber-age equivalent of conventional tenants or homeowners associations, minus the stodgy meetings, stale cookies and hours of arguing. They act as unofficial discussion boards, community hubs and classified listings for discarded furnishings and jobs.
For the loft lifestyle, the message boards play a key role. Not only do the buildings host a mixed group of creative urban professionals, young families and college students, who all share hallways, game rooms, libraries, rooftop pools, decks and dog runs, but many loft dwellers are new to Downtown and need help finding restaurants, shops and friendly faces.
"People are still isolated in Downtown and don't have a lot of support services yet," said Elizabeth Peterson, CEO of E.P.G. hospitality services, which has worked with residents through their message boards when renovating buildings Downtown. "Communicating this way gives them a network, family and an environment. Because it is so isolated, when they move they become friends very quickly."
Big Response
Currently, 245 of the 319 tenants in the Pacific Electric Lofts have signed up for the online bulletin board, which was started by a resident when the building opened in 2005.
Some posts reveal the lively social community: A thread of messages follows the losing and finding of a large cat that escaped from an apartment. Another post asks if anybody had found an ipod in a common area (it was returned promptly). Tenants sell furniture, ask for help and send invites to parties.
Other posts detail the difficulties that arise when hundreds of people share common spaces. In a message titled "Your Body Fluids, and You," one tenant delicately reprimands the person who vomited outside his door. Another reads: "I don't appreciate drunk people yelling to each other when we have a 4-year old trying to sleep."
Christopher Lance said he found the message board through an online search and used it when pondering a move to the building.
"I monitored it for several months looking for recurring complaints that the management didn't seem to be properly addressing," Lance said in an email. "Also, I was trying to gauge what type of people lived in the building. Were they complainers? Good neighbors? Was it going to be like living in a dorm?"
Lance must have liked what he read. He moved into the building in April.
Communication Forum
Peterson is working on the building's massive renovation that began when ICO Investments bought the property. For residents like Wabschall, the side effect is a lot of noise. Peterson said she uses the site to coordinate meetings with residents and hear their concerns about parking, the rooftop pool and noise levels.
Beth Clarke, who is married to Wabschall, said that the board has helped them find out what is going on with the building, but that it can also have a negative effect on communication.
"Some people use it as a forum to bitch and moan and attack other people," said Clarke. "It really can become unproductive."
Additionally, she noted, much of the community building actually comes from interactions in the common areas, when tenants gather in the pool or around the barbeque and actually meet face-to-face.
"Everybody has an opinion," said Yuval Bar-Zemer, who is both a developer and a resident of the Toy Factory Lofts, and who is signed on to the building's listserve. "Some say it goes to the whining side and others say, 'No, it's great.' It's the nature of the beast."
Contact Kathleen Nye Flynn at kathleen@downtownnews.com.
page 7, 7/3/2006
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to redistribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
"Okay, I'm all for the P.E. face-lift," he wrote on the building's online message site. "But, my fillings are rattling out of my head with all that blasted jackhammering."
Within minutes, he found support. "Ouch... sounds bad," wrote a neighbor, who suggested Wabschall contact building management.
"Yeah, I had (the) biggest headache all day," another commiserated.
Two days later, the building manager went online to respond.
"I know it's a headache," she wrote. "But the building is going to look amazing!" The construction was for a bar downstairs, she added, something many residents were looking forward to having.
The Pacific Electric building's message board is just one of an increasing number of building-specific online chat sites in Downtown Los Angeles. The Toy Factory Lofts and the Higgins Building have tenant listserves, and residents in other structures chart community issues in blogs or create Myspace accounts.
The online sites are the cyber-age equivalent of conventional tenants or homeowners associations, minus the stodgy meetings, stale cookies and hours of arguing. They act as unofficial discussion boards, community hubs and classified listings for discarded furnishings and jobs.
For the loft lifestyle, the message boards play a key role. Not only do the buildings host a mixed group of creative urban professionals, young families and college students, who all share hallways, game rooms, libraries, rooftop pools, decks and dog runs, but many loft dwellers are new to Downtown and need help finding restaurants, shops and friendly faces.
"People are still isolated in Downtown and don't have a lot of support services yet," said Elizabeth Peterson, CEO of E.P.G. hospitality services, which has worked with residents through their message boards when renovating buildings Downtown. "Communicating this way gives them a network, family and an environment. Because it is so isolated, when they move they become friends very quickly."
Currently, 245 of the 319 tenants in the Pacific Electric Lofts have signed up for the online bulletin board, which was started by a resident when the building opened in 2005.
Some posts reveal the lively social community: A thread of messages follows the losing and finding of a large cat that escaped from an apartment. Another post asks if anybody had found an ipod in a common area (it was returned promptly). Tenants sell furniture, ask for help and send invites to parties.
Other posts detail the difficulties that arise when hundreds of people share common spaces. In a message titled "Your Body Fluids, and You," one tenant delicately reprimands the person who vomited outside his door. Another reads: "I don't appreciate drunk people yelling to each other when we have a 4-year old trying to sleep."
Christopher Lance said he found the message board through an online search and used it when pondering a move to the building.
"I monitored it for several months looking for recurring complaints that the management didn't seem to be properly addressing," Lance said in an email. "Also, I was trying to gauge what type of people lived in the building. Were they complainers? Good neighbors? Was it going to be like living in a dorm?"
Lance must have liked what he read. He moved into the building in April.
Peterson is working on the building's massive renovation that began when ICO Investments bought the property. For residents like Wabschall, the side effect is a lot of noise. Peterson said she uses the site to coordinate meetings with residents and hear their concerns about parking, the rooftop pool and noise levels.
Beth Clarke, who is married to Wabschall, said that the board has helped them find out what is going on with the building, but that it can also have a negative effect on communication.
"Some people use it as a forum to bitch and moan and attack other people," said Clarke. "It really can become unproductive."
Additionally, she noted, much of the community building actually comes from interactions in the common areas, when tenants gather in the pool or around the barbeque and actually meet face-to-face.
"Everybody has an opinion," said Yuval Bar-Zemer, who is both a developer and a resident of the Toy Factory Lofts, and who is signed on to the building's listserve. "Some say it goes to the whining side and others say, 'No, it's great.' It's the nature of the beast."
Contact Kathleen Nye Flynn at kathleen@downtownnews.com.
page 7, 7/3/2006
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to redistribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
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